A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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Maryland Moves to Ban ‘Cyberbullying’

While the enactment of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s sweeping gun control package has gotten more coverage, the Maryland House and Senate have also just passed a bill directed at banning “cyberbullying.” [Capital Gazette, WJZ] The bill would, among other things, prohibit the use of electronic means (including cellphones, Facebook, and online forums) to intentionally “harass, or inflict serious emotional distress” on a minor. Violations could be punished by up to a year’s imprisonment.

“The new law is a serious affront to First Amendment liberties.”

In effect, the new law attempts to criminalize a good portion of the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, at least when undertaken in part or whole through newer technology.

Unfortunately, the new law is a serious affront to First Amendment liberties. It criminalizes a substantial swath of speech without clearly laying out notice of which speech it prohibits. It also prohibits much speech that, while in many cases reprehensible and harmful, is not well remedied by the harshness of criminal sanction.

It’s true that the law as passed drops some of the worst features of an earlier version, such as a ban on posting “private information” about minors. It also shifts the focus to a “course of conduct,” so that an individual cruel comment standing alone might not support prosecution. But the wider dangers remain. While electronic annoyance of an adult becomes criminal only if it continues after a request to stop, no such triggering provision is included for behavior that may annoy a minor. (And as I read it, there is no requirement that the defendant know that the person being subjected to intentional emotional distress is a minor — engaging in a vigorous “flame war” with a Maryland resident might turn out to be criminal if the username “ParentInLinthicum” turns out to conceal a teenage user.) Exceptions are made for speech that is intended to express political views or convey information, a curious pair of exemptions in that it has long been assumed that our First Amendment protects many types of seriously annoying speech other than those two.

We are supposed to support this law — and some lawmakers I admire did support it — to show that we care about children. Once on the books, however, this law will assuredly ruin the lives and futures of other kids who will be the subject of investigations and prosecutions, and not all those kids are monsters whose ruin we should accept with equanimity. Some further background here.